This is Day 11 (August 24). Gymnastics Gala



With the Artistic Gymnastics events having wrapped up last evening, today there's one last blast of Gymnastics at the Olympic Indoor Hall, before it gets turned into the venue for the Basketball finals. The hall is about a 20 minute walk from the Selete Media Village, whose main residence building is pictured below. The picture isn't backwards; those banners swing around with the wind, which today had them pointing this direction.


The indoor hall was completed in 1995, and today held a fraction of its normal seating capacity of 17,500 for Gymnastics; over 19,000 for Basketball. Medalists from the gymnastics competion at the 2004 Athens Olympic games perform exhibition rotuines at the Gala, and there are also athletic dance and vocal performances by the 'Children of the Games', a group of 100 children ages 8-12 as well as 20 young Greek athletes.

The equipment used by both the medalists and the children include (left to right, above & below) the rings, pommel horse, vault, floor excercise, balance beam, parallel bars, trampoline (2 of them) and horizontal bar.


The athletes below are all medal winners from this summer's Olympics.












The next summer Olympics will be in Beijing in 2008. In honor of that, the Olympic athletes from China work out on the equipment.


At the end of the 2 hour Gala, the athletes take a bow on the floor exercise mat.


Then some fireworks.




One last look at the Olympic Indoor Hall, as set up for Artistic Gymnastics. It will now be set up to host the basketball finals starting the next night.


On the walk back to Selete, we pass the TODAY show's studio, which is on the air at the time, since at 2:10 Athens time, it's 7:10 AM in New York.


Then we walk through the Agora, which has lots more people than the last time we were here.




Next page-August 26 USA vs Spain Basketball


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